Buyer beware. I'm a music book geek, you may not be. This book is a "tell all" from a unique persepctive. Faragher was a Nashville-based booking agent for a number of big-time country music stars in the 1980s. Booking agents are contracted by the musicians to book concerts for them, set up tours, etc. The agent gets a 10% commission on anything they book. It's amazing what some of these groups got paid way back then. I'm talking $6000-$20,000 per night and this is back in the early 1980s. Crazy! Of course, a lot of these artists didn't save their money and went broke.
Okay, so here's a little review from James Stephenson, Soc. of the Cincinnati Lib., Washington, D.C. He's not a fan:
Faragher, a reluctant Nashville insider, here attempts to "expose" the country music racket. Far from being an enlightening glimpse behind the scenes, his book is nothing more than a tedious, mean-spirited grouse at an industry whose sins and scandals are (at least by Faragher's account) no worse than those of any other big business. Faragher engages in pointless name-calling and personal attacks on co-workers, associates, and the professional musicians in his circle. Much of his vehemence is leveled at obscure supporting figures whose names will have little meaning to even the most ardent fans. The amateurish writing only underscores the book's banality. Not recommended.
Ouch. Well for the $19.95 this book cost in 1992, Stephenson makes some good points. But for $4.00, this book has some merit. That's a qualified some, mind you.
The Good: Faragher tells is like it is. He offers facts, figures, and dates to back it up. You get some pretty good stories about George Jones, Ricky Skaggs (a big jerk, per Faragher), Jerry Lee Lewis, James Brown, Randy Travis (a big wuss, per Faragher) and so on. With characters like these, there are bound to be some good stories, and Faragher doesn't disappoint. Here's a sample:
"Of all the entertainers I have ever met, known, or dealth with, James Brown is the worst, with the singular exception of Ricky Skaggs. He truly belives that he is the father of rock and roll. No, 'father' is not strong enough. He calls himself the Godfather. He knows that he is greater by far, and certainly more universally acclaimed, than Elvis Presley, or anyone else for that matter. According to him, his is the only face that can be recognized worldwide, by anyone, anywhere on earth. 'Besides, Elvis never played Africa!'"
Brown later refuses to let Faragher take off his sport coat in a boiling hot backstage dressing room. Faragher tries to negotiate the particulars of a show and Brown won't say anything but "God will handle it." And so on and so forth. There's some great stuff on Jerry Lee Lewis, too, whom Faragher adores despite his legendary eccentricities. Faragher clearly thinks that most of these people are disloyal jerks and portrays almost all of them that way. The one's he likes, he seems to shrug off as just part of the business.
Some of the minor characters are a hoot, too. The best one is probably Sherwood Cryer, a minor legend who was the co-owner of Gilley's in Pasadena, Texas back in the day. The battles between Cryer and Mickey Gilley are insane. Unfortunately, I had to go outside the book to get some of the real goods on Cryer, but he is definitely a guy worth Googling.
Faragher offers a insider's perspective from an area of the music industry that you almost never read about. I had little understanding of what booking agents do, or how they conduct business. They work separate and independent from the musician's management, but generally work for a booking agency. Faragher was president and booker for In Concert, an agency that he helped found after his former boss died. There's some good inside baseball on how artists, once they hit big, generally fire the booking agents and get more prominent agents (Faragher's main competition is the William Morris Agency), or even start their own booking companies and hire an in-house agent, thus keeping a larger piece of the pie. Faragher paints almost all of the artists are vain, greedy bastards who will stab anyone in the back to get ahead. It's also surprising how whiny and childlike some of artists are behind the scenes.
The Bad: Faragher's not much of a writer or a storyteller, which brings things down considerably. The book is largely incoherent, just a random collection of chapters, each of them covering a particular artist. So, there's not much continuity. It jumps from subject to subject. That wouldn't be the end of the world, had Faragher not padded the book with chapters that detail things like a relatively uneventful trip to Jamaica and his take on why artists are such vile people. He also admits to being pretty much a snake himself, though. Again, Faragher seems to take this as all part of the business. Everyone's a snake, so he's one, too. There is a LOT of superfluous details that aren't very interesting, and the chapters on artists such as Lou Rawls go nowhere and offer almost no insight.
Overall, this is for the true geeks only, but that doesn't mean it's all bad. Because Faragher only represented a handful of artists, the book does not offer a comprehensive look at country music or the industry, just the small slice of which Faragher took part. But in that minutiae, there's some pretty good music book geek reading. Not the best ever, but a fun quick read that's hard to beat for the price.
Click here to buy it for one cent.
Thanks for the review! I had this book when I was 13 and 14 (it cost me under $10) and sold it because it was a hard read for a teen.
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